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We got going pretty early on Thursday morning. A cool thing happened overnight: rain fell pretty hard and the waterfall was gushing more heavily as a result. I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but it was coming down pretty heavily.

I guess it’s kind of hard to tell, but you should trust me. I was there. So we said farewell to the north side of Molokai — my new favorite island in the whole world — and moved on. Here’s the view back over the shoulder as we moved onward toward the other side of the island and to Maui’s cultural capital, Lahaina.

A very cool thing happened as we rounded Molokai — Captain Brad found a gaggle(?) of spotted dolphins. So he moved the boat’s heading so that we cut across their path and alongside. They got totally into it and started swimming along our bow — and I mean inches from the boat — jumping and racing us. It was obvious to me that they were having fun. Like a spaz, I stood at the bow and tried to take some pictures. Here’s what I got.

Lame I know. But trust me, I tried. Beautiful creatures, these. Not a bad life it seems. Swimming with their friends and jumping at the chance to peel off on a chase / race / whatever this is called with a sailboat. I wish I had remembered that I have a video function in my camera. That would have been cool to put a video of them jumping into this post. There’s always next time.

So we got to Maui — which is really freaking big — and pulled up to Lahaina, one of the oldest settlements in the islands. I took a picture of the town from the water, but it was too hard to see anything so I am not posting it. So we opted to go ashore to dump trash, walk around and generally see what was up. Captain Brad stayed behind to get some provisions and to do something with a pump that needed doing. So First Mate David and I went into town. Oh wait — before I forget. I have a hard time getting into the dingy — this is a chronic problem. This particular time, we were anchored out in the little harbor and, since we were splitting up from Captain Brad, we agreed I would take my phone. So I had my bberry clipped to my pocket (dumb idea A), then I tried to get into the dingy a new way — by plopping down on my ass on the little launching pad (dumb idea B), and scooting across on my butt (dumb idea C, and final dumb idea related to electronics). The shockwave of my ass hitting the deck and my spazzy scooting popped the bberry off my pocket. Plop it went into the Pacific Ocean. Woops.

Blackberrys sink pretty fast, in case you were wondering. In truth the only thing I miss about that thing was that it contained my highest ever brick breaker score: nine thousand, seven hundred something. Also, I had just downloaded Sudoku and Poker to the thing for this trip. Oh well. Now it’s sitting in 20-ish feet of water. First Mate David offered to go down and get it. He’s a really nice guy and it was a kind offer. I was over it pretty fast — and a little excited that I was that much more unreachable. (Some may wonder what I am reached by” since I have no full time job. You’d be amazed what activities I am up to that put me in constant touch with important business partners like Destino Spa, the reservationist at Village Pub, and Fandango, among others.)
So we rode the dingy into Lahaina. While we were riding in, or rather hydroplaning in under Captain Brad’s heavy throttle, I wondered what would happen if we hit a small bird resting in the water. I imagine it would be like when those jetboats hit a wave the wrong way and disintegrate and toss the passengers into the air. When we got in and docked, I was taking no chances so I held onto the dock and crawled out of the dingy a little at a time. It worked and I was safe.

First Mate David and I walked down Front Street to the Lahaina Court House / Museum. That was pretty cool. They had one of the oldest Hawaiian kingdom flags on display. They also had a really nice whale exhibit that artfully blended a wonderful video and photo presentation on humpback whales with an historical look at the whaling trade — you know the hunting and dismemberment of humpbacks. It was a little odd watching a Discovery Channel style movie on how these beautiful creatures play, sing, dance, raise their you — with an antique harpoon cannon on display above the screen. They also had real flensing tools (anyone who read Judy Blume growing up knows what these are) and detailed explanations of how they were used. In case the descriptions didn’t make you understand, there were lots of pictures of dead whales being turned into fuel oil or whatever. Litterally from corpse to oil in a very orderly manner. (Cool side note, First Mate David had actually swam (swum?) with Humpbacks in the south Pacific and made a movie and a recording of it. We watched that later Thurs night, very cool.) Anyhow, the museum overall was great, I would just make a tweak or two in the curation. Let’s segregate the celebration from the murder as a starting point. Other than that, I love it Lahaina!

Oh! I almost forgot … right after the courthouse, we went over to something called the Baldwin Home just down Front Street a ways. This was the home of Dwight Baldwin, a protestant medical missionary who arrived on Maui in the 1830s. Evidently, this fellow was quite a leader. He created a congregation of nearly 3000 in Lahaina and he single-handedly kept a smallpox outbreak from spreading by convincing neighboring villages to adopt a strict quarantine and by making pox vaccinations available to tens of thousands. I have no footnotes for all this; only what the tour guide told me. So this Pastor / Dr Baldwin also had his clinic in the house. Fortunately — and I mean this was like the highlight of my entire time in Maui so far — they saved his medical exam instruments. On display were all manner of picks, tools, spreaders and pumpers. The two that I thought were worth photographing ranked highest on both unexpectedness and practicality:

The enema pump

And the town’s one speculum.

I wish I had photographed the extremely creepy doll that was in the baby’s room. It looked like a regular rag doll but it had this crazy cloth head with a woman-child’s face painted on it. I’ll see if I can find a picture of it online somewhere…hold on a second …. nope, no luck.

We saw some other cool things in Lahaina including the Wo Hing museum. This is a museum focused on the history of the Chinese people on Maui / in Hawaii. Originally the Wing Ho society was founded locally as a kind of fraternal organization for Chinese men working on the plantations. Cool as all this was, the boat was calling us back. Not literally because my phone was gone, but in our hearts, we needed to get back to the real trip. So we walked back to the docks to meet Captain Brad and dingy back to the boat.

From Lahaina, we moved on to a wonderful snorkeling spot the name of which I can’t remember. We saw trigger fish, sea turtles (2 of them getting their shells cleaned), tons of reef life and — best of all — when you dove down a little ways, you could hear the whales singing clear as a bell. They were just outside the cove we were swimming in. Very cool.

On the way out of Maui, we traveled up the northeastern part of Lanai — also very beautiful but quite deserted. We stopped by shipwreck beach. Saw more whales but also you can guess what’s there. I don’t know why I forgot to take pictures of that. Based on the conditions, we went back to Molokai to anchor for the night. It was a really nice ride over there as the sun set on day 3; saw more humpbacks and babies doing tricks. We anchored in this little harbor and the conditions were perfect — clear skies, bright moon, quiet water. We all toasted the day over a great dinner (thanks First Mate David), got loaded with more excellent wines, listened to 80s music, talked about various topics including transvestism in Polynesian culture, had a scotch on the back deck — listened to more music — and then called it a night.

Category : Stuff, Travel, Worth knowing